Rebekah Modrak and Jamie Vander Broek Co-Create Humility Website
In October, 2017 Stamps Professor Rebekah Modrak and Art & Design Librarian Jamie Vander Broek presented Humility in the Age of Self-Promotion, a colloquium co-created with Aaron Ahuvia (Professor of Marketing, U‑M Dearborn) and Sarah Buss (Professor of Philosophy, U‑M). The colloquium brought together twenty-seven scholars, workers and people to reflect on their research and experiences with humility and self-promotion.
In January 2019, Modrak and Vander Broek launched a website, created by web designer Sam Oliver (Stamps BFA ‘15) and designer/illustrator Joe Iovino (Stamps BFA ‘18), intended to extend the Humility project to a wider audience. The site includes a book proposal for a collection of Humility essays, bios for all twenty-seven contributors to the book, and a “Tell Your Story” option for readers to express the ways that they experience the value of humility in their life or work.
The Colloquium on Humility is funded by MCubed, a campus-wide seed funding program at the University of Michigan, with involvement from the University of Michigan Libraries, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, and the School of Business at University of Michigan-Dearborn.
According to Modrak and Vander Broek:
“We see the book as being for every person who feels uneasy and diminished after subjecting the most intimate parts of their lives to Likes and Follows, and for every person who cringes at presidential boasting and disregard for truth. Humility in the Age of Self-Promotion is a collection of essays written by activists, makers, scholars, and practitioners — philosophers, psychologists, a journalist, a columnist, a librarian, a farmer, a lawyer, a U.S. Navy Captain, consumer culture scholars, artists, educators, race theory scholars, and others— who’ve experienced, studied, and reflected upon the role of humility. Some are leading scholars in their field. Others are unpublished authors. Their essays are part philosophy, part practical advice, expressed through research and lived experience, and they are inspiring us to de-center ourselves and resist self-promotion every day.”
Humility in the Age of Self Promotion | ageofhumility.com